Zip compression going propietary?

[Julio Franco]

The .zip compression format has known remarkable stability and compatibility for many years, but that may soon change. PKWare and WinZip, makers of competing compression and encryption products, are fighting over the .zip standard--which means that .zip archive files created by one program may not be accessible by the other.

Both companies recently changed their implementations of the .zip format. In May, WinZip released a beta version of WinZip 9 that alters the .zip format. PKWare made its changes earlier, but recently posted specifications detailing its changes to the format.

Read more: PC World.

 

[Phantasm66]

I can see one company releasing .zp2 or .zppit or something. If they wanna shoot themselves in the foot, fine. There's plenty of compression standards for file archiving in this manner - .gz and so forth. What's one more? I am sure that all of these zip type file format managers like winzip, powerzip, etc will support all future formats, and if they don't then they are daft. And there will be open source programs as well, etc. I am sure of it. No major changes on the file compression format front, I am sure. (Let's hope I am right).

 

[Rick]

All I have to say is .RAR

 

[agissi]

All I have to say is .ZIP

 

[forciano]

all i have to say its all about the benjamins baby

 

[StormBringer]

I use winrar anyway, and my preferred archive type is .rar, so let them fight it out, destroy eachother for all I care. I'm sure Winrar will support whatever comes of it, if I should need to deal with the filetype, and I will continue to "zip" things in .rar

 

[Rick]

Originally posted by ---agissi---
All I have to say is .ZIP

Nooo...

[size=3].RAR![/size]

 

[DigitAlex]

Rar is great and have many advantages over zip

but has a very very bid DISadvantage

the algorithm is proprietary and i doubt there are open source versions of software to create decompress rars

 

[Phantasm66]

Oh man....

tar -zcvf ./tarball.tar.gz /path/to/dir

how hard is that??

 

[DigitAlex]

Originally posted by Phantasm66
Oh man....

tar -zcvf ./tarball.tar.gz /path/to/dir

how hard is that??

Why do you say that ? because Rick says RAR??

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Phant> tar.gz isn't exactly common on Windows machines...

And how hard is the following:

pkunzip example.zip c:\example\

or alternatively

pkunzip -d -o example.zip c:\example\
(which'll restore/create the directories in the zip, and overwrite any files without prompting....)

 

[Antiorganic]

I'm tired of this "ZIP vs. RAR" nonsense.

BZ2 is better, and it's an open standard to boot.

 

[Phantasm66]

Look, tarballs rule you all. Bow your head!

 

[DigitAlex]

i have a single word to aswer all your nonsense : STACKER

LMAO

 

[Rick]

RAR

 

[DigitAlex]

lol rick, this thread is going more like a new battle

after NV vs ATI and Intel vs AMD,

let me present you, ladies and gentlement the new contest :

RAR vs ZIP